I understand that this injection will probably save lives. I find it to be a huge intrusion by goverment to MANDATE that any American be injected with ANYTHING.
If there wasn't an opt-out clause, I'd agree with you. But so long as you can sign yourself OUT of vaccinations, the "mandate" isn't really a mandate, it is just a strongly worded suggestion.
But the issue of whether the state should require ANY vaccinations is separate from whether they should require THIS vaccination.
BTW, as a quasi-libertarian, I am still in favor of vaccination programs, because it IS an area where government has to protect the common good, and only government can do so.
If every other person gets vaccinated, it is in your own interest NOT to be, since you can't get the disease from anybody else and you might be hurt by the vaccine.
But if everybody acts in their own interest, thousands, maybe millions, will die because nobody will get the vaccine.
It is a classic case where government is necessary for society to benefit as a whole where individual greed does not lead to optimal outcomes, or even good outcomes.
It's like having laws about which direction to drive on the street, and speed limits and stop signs. On an individual basis, you could violate all those things from time to time with no harm, but if there were no rules, we'd all be getting our cars fixed.
So would an AIDS vaccine if it existed. But the only way somebody can get HIV or HPV is through sexual promiscuity. What Perry did today is NO DIFFERENT than signing a law requiring schoolkids to get vaccinated against AIDS.
This corporate whore Rick Perry (who claims he wants to be the Republican VP candidate in 2008 by the way) has essentially just stated that all Texas teenagers are sluts.
Well said. Let us make our own informed decision.
Since one half of all Americans have been infected by the harmless and ubiquitous HPV it means that one half of all women have been infected, yet only 1% of all women ever develop CC. Since HPV strikes both men and women equally, you would expect to see an equal distribution pattern of CC and Penile cancer, yet the disease is extremely rare in men.
CC starts as a hyperplasia which progresses to a dysplasia with a small number of cases progressing onto neoplasia, of which even a smaller number become malignant. Yet since CC develops only from one cell what happens to the millions of other cervical cell that are infected??
There is NO, I repeat NO direct evidence, no peer-reviewed primary research study proving that HPV causes CC, only retrospective studies and the Merck trials. You will notice that the vaccine does not protect against all HPV strains and that Merck uses the word "May" protect in their advertisements.
An alternative hypothesis for the reason that HPV is detected in some CC cells is that dysplasias MAY trigger a simultaneous HPV growth. HPV is not malignant, and CC is NOT contagious.
From what I understand, it is not mandated. One can opt out of this if one chooses to based on religious grounds.